Cat reveals a clue

“Ach! Where have you been hiding?” Cat smiled. “I was about to wonder whether you were even here.”

She sat amidst a pile of ruffled gray linen, with a piece of darker gray fabric stretched on the embroidery hoop in her lap. Gray and gray and gray.

“I was upstairs, in the case I was needed,” Osh said softly.

Cat held up her sewing basket. “Put this out of the way and have a seat. Is it nap time already?”

He set the basket on the chair and sat himself down on the couch beside her. “I do not know whether they are sleeping, but she finally stopped to cry.”

“Ach! Was she crying?” Cat chirped. “I didn’t even hear her.”

“I do not mean the baby,” Osh muttered.

She gasped. “Oh – Osh!”

Her hand went out and settled upon his, and he caught her fingertips beneath his thumb. For a moment they were silent and stared helplessly at one another. When Osh could bear it no longer, he pulled his hand away to rub his forehead and hide his eyes.

“When will it end?” Cat whimpered. “I keep hoping she will cry herself out sometime.”

“That is not what I hope,” he said. “That is what I fear.”

“I don’t mean…”

“If she cries until she is empty of tears, she will be only empty, and you will wish for the Flann who cried again. You will see.”

Cat stared at him for a moment. “You frighten me, Osh.”

He sighed and laid his head back against the couch. “I frighten me, too.”

“Do you suppose she’s crying because he’s dead?” she asked tentatively.

“If she isn’t now, she will be when I find him,” he growled.

It was an ignoble wish, he knew, but when he heard that muffled sobbing behind the wall, his hands twitched with the desire to be doing something. The most reasonable thing seemed to be to wrap them around the scoundrel’s throat and squeeze the life out of him.

“Has she never yet told you?” he asked, though he knew she had not.

“Not a peep.”

“I think it is that steward Aldwyn,” he grumbled, though he did not truly believe it. “I don’t trust a man who does not smile even when I tell the funny jokes.”

“Ach, Osh!” Cat groaned. “Alred needs a steward who never laughs. Otherwise, how would he ever get any work done? Anyway, I know for certain it is not Aldwyn. I think.”

“How do you know?”

Cat sighed and banged the wooden hoop against her legs in agitation. Osh had suspected for some time that Cat was in possession of a clue, and at last he was proven right.

“Because he’s blond,” she blurted. “It’s dark hair her love is having.”

“Ah.” Osh sat back slowly so as not to interrupt her if she wanted to say more.

She stared at the cold fireplace for a moment, and then she leaned close to him and whispered eagerly, “You won’t say a word to Flann or to anyone? Not even Paul?”

“Upon my honor!” he said grandly, in imitation of the Old Man.

“So,” she whispered, “one day soon after the wee baby came, I was looking through my sister’s things to find where she had hidden all the pretty white dresses we had made.”

Osh knew where they were hidden, but out of loyalty to Flann he had said nothing then and said nothing now.

“And instead of that I found a little pouch with a lock of hair inside. Black it was as a raven’s breast, and too coarse to be mine or my father’s or sisters’. So I think it must be his. It was hidden well away, as if she meant for no one to find it.”

“But you did, naughty Cat,” he scolded. “Do you think she knows how to hide a pile of dresses in the same space a little bit of hair must take?”

“Nooo…”

“You were prowling.”

She smiled sheepishly.

“Oh, Cat,” he groaned. “What shall we do with you?”

“Take away my daily plate of cream?”

“We must not do that.” He pinched her cheek. “We are trying to make you fat.”

She laughed, then giggled, then looked down at the embroidery on her lap and sighed.

“What are you sewing?” he asked to distract her. “It looks like deer tracks.”

“Deer tracks?” she laughed.

“A deer walking sidewise,” he shrugged.

It was the closest idea he could find for these little shapes, twice rounded on the top and pointed at the bottom, though the hooves of a deer left a hollow in the middle.

“These are wee hearts, Osh!”

“Hearts!” he gasped. “Do men’s hearts look like this?”

“I – I don’t know!” she giggled. “I never thought of it. They don’t look much like chicken hearts, do they?”

“Why are you sewing chicken hearts, O my foolish daughter?” he groaned. “Are you truly a Cat inside?”

“No! Ach! They are only the symbol of a heart. Look: to men, this heart shape is the symbol of love.”

“Oh… it means you love chicken.”

“No!” she laughed. “It means I love that little baby upstairs.” She brushed her hand fondly over the raised stitches. “My sister can make her daughter go all in gray, but she can’t stop Auntie Cat from embroidering little hearts all over her wee dresses. I want Liadan… to know she’s loved.”

Cat closed her eyes and bit her lips between her teeth. Her hand was clenched tightly over the embroidery frame, but it relaxed as Osh stroked the back of it.

“She knows,” he whispered.

“I wish her Mama would – would show her…”

“She does. When she is alone with her baby, she does.”

“She does? What does she do?”

“She talks to her and sings to her. In her Gaelic, so I do not understand. But I think it is nice things. She is calling her mo stór–it means ‘my treasure’, doesn’t it?”

“Aye…” she sniffled. “Did she tell you that?”

“No! I don’t like her to know I can hear. She might be afraid and stop to sing and talk. I asked Malcolm when I saw him one time. But it means she is loving her baby, doesn’t it?”

“Aye.” Cat smiled bravely. “I wish I could hear it.”

“Liadan does hear it, and that is the important thing.” He patted her hand. “She will know she is loved, if her Mama is telling her so, and if Paul and Osh are kissing her, and if Auntie Cat is sewing on her dresses some nice chicken hearts.”